Packing

I wanted to write about packing. About taking so much and needing so little. About always having enough even when everything is stolen on the second day of a seven-day trip in a third world country and still having enough. But my bag is packed. What is in it will stay. What's not, I don't need. Won't need. Don't care.

My brother came over to return the garment bag that I never use and the glasses I do and left in New York. He came over to bring me a present and we went out for a birthday drink even though it wasn't anyone's birthday. Not really. Not yet.

We decided against the bar with a man I used to adore in favor of another and found ourselves faced with a man who drove me crazy. With smiles and handshakes, we pretended not to mind; though, my brother's beer spilled in the confusion.

"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?" the man asked.

I shook my head and smiled as he wiped down the counter. No use crying over spilled beer.

"I'm going to France tomorrow," I told my brother who already knew that I was. "Crazy, huh?"

"Crazy," he agreed. He had already said the same about my packing list and corresponding pivot tables.

We chatted about Provence, New York, the impossibility of being a vegetarian in Argentina. Christmas bonuses and 401(k) vesting. Mom's birthday in June. A trip to North Dakota in July. Stuff that didn't mean anything and everything.

"So, 32, huh?" he asked.

I nodded.

"How does it feel to be 32?"

"Old."

I lied. I wasn't 32 yet and I didn't feel old. I didn't feel much different than I did at 22, only happier. More confident. Less worried about what I ought to do and more sure that it didn't really matter as long as I did what I felt was right.

On the walk home, the lyrics of Fame ran through my head for no reason at all.

I'm gonna live forever
I'm gonna learn how to fly
High

I feel it coming together
People will see me and cry
Fame

I'm gonna make it to heaven
Light up the sky like a flame
Fame

I'm gonna live forever
Baby remember my name

Honestly, I didn't get it either but it made for an interesting walk home. I did manage to restrain myself. No twirling. No leaping. No Leroy. No running, chest out, with my head thrown back. I just smiled a bit and thanked my lucky (if unseen) stars that my bags were packed. I was exhausted.

Home again, I searched for a one-quart bag, decided that two pints would do and placed the baggies next to the bits that I'd grab first thing in the morning. If I forgot them or lost them or they were plucked from my bags, it wouldn't matter. The bags didn't matter. A plane to Paris, a train to Avignon, a birthday beside a salt water pool in the south of France. Nothing much mattered but that.

I crawled into bed with a smile on my face and a ridiculously cheesy 80s song in my head. "I'm gonna learn how to fly..."


Tag: Travel

Late for work

Walking through the leaf-shaded streets of Capitol Hill, I found a different world than the one I knew on evenings and weekends.

Women with babies strapped to their breasts and those pushed in expensive urban strollers wandered along brick sidewalks. A single girl sat outside Murky Coffee, pouring over a mess of books and papers, pen poised. The temporary structure at Eastern Market glowed clean and bright, empty of the weekend crowds. Muffled shouts mingled with the steady drill of rubber and leather on pavement as school kids shot hoops in their khaki pants and white polo shirts, penned by chained link. Delivery trucks lumbered down the street and through the alley. I looked both ways and crossed.

A pair of men rifled through a stack of free books on the table outside, and I stepped to the side when they turned to go. A door slammed in the building next door. I glanced up and recognized the man on the steps.

"Hey," he exclaimed.

"Hi."

"I'll be right there."

"I've got a present for you."

He raised his brows and smiled. I ducked into the coolness of the shop. A woman at the counter, a baby on her breast, handed over a stack of children's books. I browsed the Travel section; needing nothing, wanting everything. If not for work, I could have spent the day reveling in the musty smell of old books. In words written and forgotten. In worlds I had not yet dreamed.

The front door opened. I plucked a book from the shelf and turned to see my friend in the door. I pulled a foil-wrapped package from my bag, handed it over and smiled.

"What is this?"

"Banana bread."

He tossed it into the air and caught it neatly.

"This is perfect." He told me of his plans for the weekend, of his plans for the night, to drive straight through from DC to Michigan, to a cabin on a lake.

"I've got zucchini bread, too, if you want it."

"Yeah. Sure. I mean, if you want," he said and, "Let me give you a hug."

In minutes he was gone. Errands to run. Preparations to take before their road trip. A short time later, I returned with a second foil-wrapped loaf. I left it on the counter with the woman working.

"I keep baking. I don't know what to do with it," I shrugged.

"Bring it to me," she laughed. "Just a little."

I promised to return with more. Soon.

As I walked to the Metro, a cab dropped a trio of men in suits before Montmartre. Inside, the tables were filled with those who lunched. In days, I would enjoy my own French fare. Leisurely lunches. Books to be devoured. In the meantime, I was late to work.


Tag: Washington DC Eastern Market Capitol Hill

Life in the Ruins – The Adventures of a New Orleanian at a Time Near the End of the World

By NOLA Celeste
(posted by Kristin on her behalf)

Life in New Orleans for the first three months after Katrina was a deliciously dystopian Orwellian mix of curfews, checkpoints and Rooms 101 filed with mold, maggot-filled refrigerators and irreplaceable flood-damaged photographs of precious family moments that had been... disappeared.

I knew something was wrong when we passed multiple regimens of slow-moving National Guard Humvees and military cargo trucks when driving back from our Storm Week refuge in Columbus, Ohio. The Humvees and trucks were filled with fresh-faced soldiers who were probably thanking fate that they were being sent to New Orleans and not to Iraq.

"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." - Ayn Rand: "Atlas Shrugged"

Residents anxious to rip out mold-covered walls waited in line for hours to obtain temporary emergency building permits from New Orleans City Hall. You were expected to gut, clean and repair your house – or risk its city-ordered demolition – but could not do so until you fought for a building permit. Sometimes City Hall would not even open for the day, given the frequent post-K power outages plaguing the area around the Superdome, City Hall's across-the-street neighbor. Demolition without a permit would cause your house to be branded with a legal pad-size florescent yellow "cease and desist" sticker placed by the NOPD. Honest people were turned into criminals by a city that did not even have a functioning jailhouse.

At first, the curfew was six p.m., then eight p.m., then ten p.m., then midnight, then two a.m. "LAST CALL!" screamed Molly, one of the bartenders at M'sER. "Wow – I never thought I would say that at 9:00 p.m.," she muttered as a Desert Storm-hued Humvee slowly passed the windows of the bar, turning left to join a Vietnam-hued Humvee parked at the corner of Bourbon Street and Conti.

To the residents of this city where the bars never closed, where you could walk down the sidewalk with your libation of choice in a go-cup and visit a drive-through Daiquiri store in neighboring Jefferson Parish, the concept of "last call" was as foreign as a blizzard. I lived for seven years in Virginia where hard alcohol is sold in dingy state-run ABC stores that make you show three forms of ID and feel like a child molester just to purchase a handle of vodka. I've been to South Carolina where it is impractical to order a drink made with a mix of two different alcohols because you are forced to buy mini airplane bottles from the bartender. Ohio, land of my in-laws, shuts its bars down at two a.m.

Unfortunately, a "to-go" gin and tonic just does not taste the same when you are staring down the gun turret of an armored Humvee parked on Bourbon Street.

"Why is there even a curfew? Aren't all of the criminals in Houston?" I overheard someone saying while waiting in line for MRE's at the Red Cross handout station located in the parking lot of a flooded elementary school near my house. The floodwaters did not eliminate the racists.

Yes, we ate MRE's – military rations – for a while. Imagine life without a single open grocery store, convenience store or restaurant. Even the stores and restaurants that did not flood were victims of a lack of frozen food foresight, as were most residents of the city. The majority of evacuees thought they would hang out for a few days in Houston and then head back home to pick up fallen leaves. Instead, they were forced to duct-tape shut their refrigerators and kick them to the curb.

"WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH." – George Orwell: "1984"

"Tom Benson Sucks" announced a duct-tape wrapped refrigerator residing in the driveway of a Saint Charles Avenue mansion. "Levee Board Victim," "Dead Wife Inside – Don't Open," "Rotten to the Corps," "Send to FEMA," and "Loot This!" proclaimed hundreds of refrigerators decorating the driveways of nearly all the houses on this avenue where the Streetcars used to run.

There is no worse smell than the rancid mix of molten ice cream, sour milk, maggoty, green meat, acrid orange juice and wet lettuce that emits as a brown goopy slime dribbling through the bottom of a powerless refrigerator.

The refrigerator propaganda was the work of a gentleman I have named "The Refrigerator Bandit" – Big Brother's cheeky younger sibling.

One victim of the Refrigerator Bandit bore the spray-painted "X" of a faux search-and-rescue crew, noting the date and the number of flies (instead of the number of dead and/or alive humans) found within. On the front of the fridge it simply read: "Feed my maggots."

My favorite: "Free Gumbo Inside."

"These are bad times. Principalities and powers are everywhere victorious, wickedness flourishes in high places." - Walker Percy: "Love in the Ruins – The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World."

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown; Governor Blanco with her "stupid eyes;" the Army Corps of Engineers; Ray Nagin and his "Chocolate City;" and, more recently, "Dollar Bill" Jefferson (whose freezer did not spew rotten filth post-K because it was filled with stacks of marked One Hundred Dollar bills). Not to mention "FOB" (Friend of Bush) and call girl-lover David Vitter and, most importantly, our President. None of these people are individually to blame for the death and destruction, yet all of them have contributed in their own special way to the bad times that plagued New Orleans

The first time I really lost it after Katrina was after watching a casually dressed President Bush stand in our Jackson Square in front of our artificially backlit Cathedral. As a person who is culturally Catholic due to a New Orleans upbringing, the fact that Mr. Bush chose as his backdrop a building filled with rows of devotional candles designed to beg the intersession of an above-perched saint, ornate Mary statues and carved Stations of the Cross angered me. His fundamentalist friends (and probably, by proxy, him) secretly hold the opinion that the unsaved New Orleans Catholics who "worship saints" and fit drinking into their schedule of religious observations (Mardi Gras – Fat Tuesday – is a foil to Ash Wednesday) probably felt like we deserved it. Unlike after 9-11, they kept silent this time. But we know what they were thinking.

The second time I really lost it after Katrina is when I joined the accidental tourists of destruction who made their way through the semi-dry muck to view the patched up remains of what used to be the gaping levee breach at the 17th Street Canal. 17th Street is located in a part of New Orleans called Lakeview. 17th Street, like the rest of its Lakeview neighbors, was lined with a mix of 1960s ranch houses and 1990s three-story mansions built on the same tiny lots as the 1960s ranch houses, after they were torn down in a fit of nouveaux riche expansion.

The three houses that stood in front of the breach had literally been... disappeared. There was nothing left, only a slab. House and contents had been washed away by the torrents and probably were deposited in small chunks several miles away from the levee.

Across the street from the breach was a house whose façade was completely ripped off by the floodwaters. You could climb into the now one-half of a house into what probably was the living room. Moldy plates still resided in the glass-front kitchen cabinets. All the furniture was piled up in a corner. The owner of the house had stapled to the wall of the living room a laminated picture of him and his toddler son standing in front of then then-intact house. It was accompanied by an open letter to the United States Army Corps of Engineers detailing the sufferings of his family. Visitors to the house had left multiple messages to the father and son on the walls of the living room. Someone had found the little boy's suit amongst the wreckage and nailed it to the wall. That sad, moldy little suit made me vomit in my mouth. "My God," I thought, "This is what the apocalypse looks like. How could people ever live here again?"

"The times are never so bad that a good man can't live in them," writes Mr. Percy on another page of "Life in the Ruins."

There are at least 270,000 good men and women who still chose to reside in New Orleans: "The City that Care (and hopefully not you) Forgot."

I hope Mr. Percy's statement is true. Happy K + 2.

- NOLA Celeste

Tag: New Orleans Katrina

Stinkin Linkin

Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. We wandered through the Quarter.

"Let's go in there," he pointed. We crossed the street and ducked into a gallery. Barely inside the door, I broke into a grin: black and white photos. He headed to the right and I to the left, soaking in the images.

A man called out to us, explained the untagged pictures on the wall. It was the first day of the exhibition. In the back, the photographer wrapped plastic around matted and unframed prints while the gallery owner wove a story of a flooded Lincoln, a couple of bartenders and a dream.

Of course, he made it sound far less cheesy.

The Stinkin Linkin was, is, a flooded Lincoln Mark VIII cum land speed racer. Once the pride of its owner, Katrina left the car flooded and apparently reeking like a "sack of dead rats." The new owners, a couple of bartenders named Andy and JT, decided to make it the "world's fastest Lincoln" and to race it in the 2007 Bonneville Salt Flats World of Speed.

For those who don't know anything about cars, racing, racing cars or salt flats, Utah's famous Bonneville Salt Flats consist of more than 30,000 barren acres.

By 1949, the raceway on the Bonneville Salt Flats was the standard course for world land speed records. On this natural straightaway the 300, 400, 500, and 600 mile per hour land speed barriers were broken. Since the first speed record attempts in 1914, hundreds of records have been set and broken in a variety of automotive and motorcycle classes.

The Stinkin Linkin will compete in the annual Speed Week, September 12-15, 2007, racing against Timer's Clocks and hoping to set a record in its class. Donations, tips, and fundraisers have helped the bartenders turn the car into a racer. The gallery sale was just one more step in the process.

The photos followed the progression of the oh-so-very photogenic bartenders/creators and friends as they built a race car.

In the words of Bienville Studios, motorcycle design studio and home of the Stinkin Linkin, "JT and Andy hope to inspire the New Orleans community with this project, it's not a car it's a metaphor. The idea is not to just restore, but to improve. Anyone could make the Lincoln run again, but only the truly determined could make it into something amazing."

As we wandered through the gallery, the images, the story resonated. A calendar with X's for Speed Week. A tattooed name on the back of a neck. Sparks flying. An odometer. Legs sticking out from under a car. A man laughing.

A man laughing.

I didn't know him but I wanted that picture.

The images stayed with me for the rest of the day, haunting me as we walked through the Quarter. As we lounged on the balcony with books and wine. As we walked the dog along the river.

Heading back to the apartment, I saw a girl I recognized, smiled and waved. With her dark glossy braids and vintage dress, Natasha was impossible to miss.

She smiled and crossed the street to talk to her friends, my friends, me. She knew the men who built the car. She'd come to the opening to support them. From the laughter that rang through the street, a lot of people had come to support them.

After dinner, after gumbo and iced tea, after beans and rice, we headed back to the apartment. The big metal door across the street from the gallery. Laughter echoed through the steamy night. I turned inside the door and said, "I think I have to get one of those pictures."

Joe waited, the door half open. Celeste waited. I deliberated and pushed the door wide, ducking across the street.

Inside, stickers dotted a number of tags beside the pictures. Taken. The plastic-wrapped mats clung together in the sultry air. The tattooed man from the pictures winked and I grinned. The street and the photos, the laughter and the subjects revved my heart just a little. The culmination of so much work, of so much time, and I could buy a small part of it.

I wandered through the artwork once, twice, bit my thumbnail for a while, looked across the room and decided. I walked up to the table.

"I'll take the one with the calendar."

"Let me find Amy."

"No worries." I felt guilty for taking her away from her friends, from her conversation.

I don't know if it will be the fastest Lincoln in the world. More than anything, it reminds me of high school days and my stepdad's car, trying to figure out how to open the gas flap, filling the tank so nobody would know I went cruising, talking on the car phone but the photos in the gallery, those online, laughter on a summer night and a wink made me hope for something more.

I hung the photo when I got home. In my living room. I don't know if I'll ever find out what happened to the Stinkin Linkin in the Salt Flats of Utah, but I wish them well.


Tag: New Orleans Art Photography Stinkin Linkin

New Orleans moment

My friend Celeste calls them New Orleans moments. These rare, serendipitous segments of time in which anything can – and will – happen. She's a NOLA girl; it makes sense that she equates them with here. The strange bit is that they seem to happen here more than any other place in the world.

Something about the Crescent City, the Big Easy, lends itself to magic, to sin and decadence and the possibility that anything will happen. Alcohol fills the gutters by night, the gullets by day, by night, by the mystical moments in between. Steamy nights, rancid with the smell of stale beer and urine under the magnolia trees. Strippers, hookers and whores. Pickpockets. Thieves. Vampires, according to lore, and black magic, voodoo, according to much more than that. A history of crooked politicians and Marie Laveau, broken levees and broken hearts.

New Orleans... a courtesan whose hold is strong upon the mature, to whose charm the young must respond. And all who leave her... return to her when she smiles across her languid fan. - William Faulkner

Cajuns and Creoles, Native Americans, Spanish, French, Africans, English, Irish, Italian, German, and the Caribbean. Food has its own flavor in the Big Easy. Language has its own sound. There's music in the words, not just the air, but it's there, too. Always music. A woman singing Killing Me Softly a capella outside the A&P. A trumpeter on the street playing Itsy Bitsy Spider for a crowd of tots. Men painted white, silver or gold stiffen into unnatural poses on milk crates for hands full of loose change.

In the midst of it all, over or under or through it all, weaves a strand of magic. Of wonder. Of possibility.

After a glass of Argentinean red that Joe brought back from his dove hunting trip, we walked the quieter streets of the Quarter to Stella! I had known of the restaurant, had rented an apartment just around corner in May, and knew that it was one of the best in New Orleans. I looked forward to our evening out, to dressing up and sitting down to dinner with my favorite southern lawyers.

After walking through the sultry, steamy New Orleans night, the air conditioning bordered between blessed relief and decidedly brisk. Hostile, almost. We took a minute to adjust. Walking to the table, the women found seats first and I shifted between the men, alternating "boy-girl" and slipped into my seat.

Joe recognized a man at the next table, another lawyer, and walked over to say "Hi." The man came back with Joe, leaned over to kiss Celeste's cheek and shook Dave's hand. They chatted while Sarah and I smiled blankly, while Dave and I pattered meaninglessly.

"Mmm-hmm," I said.

"Yep."

"What?"

"Yep."

"Good times."

Joe ordered a bottle of wine and menu in hand, I sipped from a frigid glass of iced water. We talked about our choices. The entrees. The merits of a Caesar salad spiced with chipotle. I glanced up and nearly choked.

"I've slept with that waiter," slipped out unexpectedly.

"What?"

"I've slept with that waiter," I repeated. The entire table turned to look at me as the man in question walked past. There was an entire history to relay but at that point, with my college friend and his wife, his brother's girlfriend and Dave, a friend, I realized that I really didn't want to discuss my sex life or love life or anything in between. I finished lamely, "He's from DC... I've known him for years."

"I thought he went home," I mused sometime later. He wasn't actually from DC but across the Atlantic.

"When's the last time you saw him?" Dave asked and I thought for a while. "Has it been more than nine months?"

"Probably."

"Perfect."

"Does anybody have a picture of an ugly baby I might borrow."

"Fortunately, no," Joe said. We joked for a while before the conversation drifted to more neutral territory or something less embarrassing for me and more embarrassing for someone else.

For the rest of the night, I caught bits of his delicious accent wafting through conversation and laughter, the clink of silver on china. He caught my eye once and his decidedly professional demeanor slipped with a "Hey." I watched as entrees were served, one server per dish. I waited.

Dave excused himself to call his girlfriend to say "good night." Joe ordered another bottle of red. Sarah talked about listing every case on which she'd worked for a security clearance. A plate of delicately balanced scallops and shrimp appeared at my elbow. I followed the arm that held it up to the smiling face.

"Hello."

"Hey."

None of the other servers seemed to be talking, but they might have recited the Gettysburg address or broken into a fully choreographed scene from Show Boat for all the attention I paid.

"What are you...? Did you move? Do you live here now?" he asked.

"No. I'm just visiting. My friends live here." I gestured vaguely toward my tablemates, not really looking. Not really seeing anything. "You?"

"I'm going back to DC in two weeks. I can't wait."

There might have been more, but not much. My friends waited, forks in hand, and I turned back to my plate, my friends, my conversation.

"You were right," Joe observed.

"I do remember the men with whom I've slept," I laughed, thoroughly amused. Joe raised an eyebrow.

"Come now. We're among friends."

I burst into laughter anew and enjoyed my dinner with said friends.

Walking home, navigating uneven sidewalks in my heels, the blush of fine red and the flush of remembrance in a sultry night, I smiled. Definitely a New Orleans moment.


Tag: Vacation New Orleans NOLA

On the fly

"Sometimes you're the fly and sometimes you're the windshield."

The big man in overalls shrugged and pushed his half full glass across the bar.

"Natasha, honey, I made room in there."

"Room for what?"

"Rail bourbon."

Shaking her head, the bartender walked over and picked up the glass.

"Not that much room," Hoss muttered as the girl added fresh ice. We all watched the Betty Page look-a-like add a shot. Thick black plaits crossed her head over the short dark bangs. Tattoos peeked from the edges of her thin cotton shift, vintage white with blue polka dots, black trim. She pushed back the full glass, a decidedly lighter shade of brown than when it left.

Hoss kept talking. Conversations grew hazy after a while, the same thread at different places. Life and work. Travel and time. Hoss would be heading offshore in just a few days for months of work and recuperation – earning money he couldn't spend on a drilling platform. Hookers and strippers beware when the work was done.

"Your friend is so interesting," I heard on the way back from the bathroom.

"And weird," I added.

"First, you weren't supposed to hear that and second, you weren't supposed to hear that…."

I laughed and pulled up a stool between Celeste and a guy from the Coast Guard, the one who found me interesting. Hoss sat at the bend in the bar and started stories that didn't seem to find their way to an end. I started stories that didn't seem to find their way to an end, dropped to be retrieved at some later point. After another beer.

With Joe arguing about his hatred of midgets and fat people in American Ts and Celeste braiding the big guy's stringy gray hair, I smoked a cigarillo with an intense man headed to work: playing poker at Harrah's from midnight to 4 a.m. The crowd shifted; the conversations and the stools stayed somewhat steady. Life and work. Travel and time. Hookers and midgets.

Late in the night, or what felt like late after an early start but probably no later than midnight, we headed back to the apartment to drink beers on the balcony; though, nobody wanted to drink. On the steps up to the last set of doors, I realized that a trio of beignets and a half pound of carrots had served as foundation for Pimms and beer. On the steps up to the last set of doors, I realized that Hoss had come home with us.

"Hoss was in your apartment," I observed somewhat belatedly [read: the next morning]. We had all gotten up feeling a little more like flies and less like windshields. "Hoss was on your balcony."

Even more belatedly, I added, "Hoss was in your bedroom."

It took me a while.

After a slow start, after breakfast and a drive to Magazine and Dante to check out a couple of construction projects, we found our way back to the bar. Joe had seen Hoss a little earlier.

"I wonder if he's gone home," Celeste mused.

"No," Joe said, shaking his head firmly. "He has not."

He was gone by the time we arrived. A patron from the night before took her place behind the bar with hair and breasts swinging. Someone asked if she owned a bra; she smiled, shrugged and moved to the other end of the room where a man used a keg as a stepstool and climbed on top of the bar to try his luck with a putt. The bartender lifted her arms to spot a tipsy man twice her size in the bar stool open.

The crowd petered out, on to the next hole with one mad dash into the back of the bar for a stroller.

"I've already lost the baby," the owner said, struggling to navigate the stools. "It's somewhere on Esplanade."

A second group of golfers entered the bar, somewhat drunker than their competition. I smiled at the man with clear blue eyes. He sat next to me and I examined the ponytail, the spacers in his ears, his T-shirt: Vaginas are really way cool. He managed to get a hole in six. Or was it seven?

I met a few of the golfers, more of the regulars, and sipped my Bloody Mary. With a nap and some food, we would start to feel like windshields again.


Tag: Vacation New Orleans NOLA Bars

Cleo and the dream of Hosses

"Thanks for protecting the house from horses."

Celeste's words ran through my head as the dog started barking.

"It's OK, Cleo," I soothed, scratching between the perked ears. "It's just a guy on a bike."

A chain rattled on the street below and we both looked for the source of the noise. I imagined hooves beating on the pavement but there wasn't a buggy in sight.

"Should we go inside now?"

The Doberman ducked through the window that served as door, stretching from floor almost to ceiling, stopping short of the ornate crown molding 14 feet up. She came back and looked at me in the chair, and I rose. Grabbed the laptop. Ducked through the window.

I couldn't see the screen anyway.

Sweat rolled down my back as I stepped into the blissfully frigid air of my friends' apartment in the Quarter, desperate for a nap, a shower, a nap in the strange little shower that opened directly into my bedroom. Anything to cool off.

I had spent hours meandering. The hardware store. A tiny little music shop on an alley. The lapidary. Café du Monde where a trumpeter played "Itsy Bitsy Spider" to a crowd of beignet gobbling parents and their powdered-sugary children. Past the Jolie-Pitt house, in honor of my sister. Bookstore after bookstore after bookstore, in honor of my addiction.

I bought sheet music in the two-story Beckham's on Decatur and a novel about Mata Hari. A signed copy of James Lee Burke's short stories in the Faulkner House. A Preservation Hall CD from the music shop.

I ducked into the gem shop to seek the only type of beads I'd ever brought home from New Orleans.

"Hey," called the man behind the counter, cordless phone pressed to his ear. "How many oceans are there?"

"I don't know... Seven? No. Sorry. Five?"

"Right, that's what they taught us – seven and five. Seven continents, five oceans. Can you name them?"

I struggled for an answer, "Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic..."

"Right, what's the fifth?" At my shrug, he started talking into the phone again. "She said 'five,' too."

"His son did a report for school and said there were four," explained a woman in the back. "It's driving him crazy."

"I swear there are five," I offered hopelessly. I couldn't think of the last to save my life.

"See, she swears there are five," I heard from the back of the store as I shrugged and paid for a mottle brown choker made of mottled bits of polished brown shell.

Back at the apartment, I laid my purchases on the bed and grinned, in spite of myself. I'd spent too much. I picked up my computer and made my way to the balcony to answer email, to think, to read, to write. I shaded the screen with my hand and tried to find the cursor in the monochromatic absorption of light that was my laptop. When Cleo gave up on the day, I was ready.

Inside, I punched a number into the phone. I waited through the first ring, the second, the third.

"Did you figure out the fifth ocean?" I asked the woman who answered.

"Excuse me?"

"Did you figure out the fifth ocean?"

The woman laughter tinkled gaily between her shop and my sofa.

"We didn't but thought it might be the Antarctic."

"Well, sort of... It's the Southern. Apparently, some people say three, others four and the rest five, absorbing bits into the main three."

Still laughing, she thanked me for calling her back. Outside, a horn blared and a man shouted angrily, "Go f*ck yourself," repeating the fulmination as the engine faded into the distance. Cleo paced nervously. I stood and listened for the clop of hooves. Content in our safety, we both seemed ready for a nap. I'd see Hoss later, if not horses. I needed my rest.


Tag: Vacation New Orleans

Away

Running. I felt like I was running. From myself or to myself, I didn't know but I had to get away. I realized I'd figure it out on the way. For the moment, though, I just hoped that my shoes had traction.

My eyes felt gritty, the lids heavy. I hadn't slept nearly enough under the thin worn comforter dotted with fading flowers in the icebox of my room. I'd turned the air conditioning down but feared turning it off and finding myself in a swampland of Louisiana nightmares.

I tossed once more and picked up the phone. 8:08. I resigned myself to the sleep I'd had and pushed myself up on an elbow. I reached for my book and waited for the knock. I could sleep later, God willing.

For the moment, I needed to be awake. I needed to rub the sleep from my eyes. I need to shower and dress and brush my teeth something fierce. I needed to walk to the hardware store and make keys to the series of doors that kept the world outside. Just a block off Bourbon, there was a lot of the world to keep out. The door to my room, another to the main part of the house. The door from the alley. The heavy metal door from the street.

When the knock sounded, I almost skipped to the door. I actually tripped.

"Good morning, Kristin."

"Good morning, sunshine."

He scowled briefly. Definitely not a "sunshine" kind of man but I figured I could get away with it. It was early and I'd known him for a decade and a half. He handed me the keys, the instructions and stumbled off into the daylight. I returned to the bed, the thin worn comforter and my book.

I'd shower in just a minute. Brush my teeth even sooner. Stumble to the hardware store before beignets and café au lait. Maybe after.

I'd read and shop. Visit a lapidary that I loved, half a dozen used bookstores and boutiques. Wander. Nap. I could sit on the balcony and read, write, watch the world pass while doing nothing at all. It didn't matter. I was away.


Tag: Vacation New Orleans NOLA

Ouch

"My arm hurts," I whined, rubbing my wrist as I walked into the office. "I think I have carpal tunnel."

"Really?"

"Well, that or arthritis." Involuntarily, we both looked out the window at the cool, gray drizzle and shuddered. "It could be arthritis or maybe I just slept funny."

"You should check on WebMD," my coworker instructed. "In the meantime, let's check out Office Yoga."

She pulled the handy, dandy, hard-bound gift book from its space behind the phone. She leafed through pages and offered a running commentary on eye strain and lower back pain. She started to read the Keyboard Calisthenics and then handed it to me with the observation, "there's a lot."

I read through the exercises (and a quote from Voltaire), checked out the illustrations, and flipped my hands this way and that, trying to relieve the pain. I moaned and I whinged. I made pathetic little "feel sorry for me" noises and then I laughed, quoting from the book, "Invent stretches that feel good."

My coworker grabbed the book and reread the lines, chortling as we both struck poses. She paused.

"Hey, this actually does feel good."

She looked a bit like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, sans the white polyester three-piece suit, which would have been très chic for our office on a Wednesday morning. She flipped her arms and tried the stretch again on the other side.

Still laughing and rolling my wrists, I walked back to my office. The arm had hurt for days, from radiating middle finger to wrist, from elbow to shoulder. For the first time in ages, I popped painkillers. I rolled a mug of steaming Cozy Chamomile (Calming chamomile for quiet moments) against the tender flesh inside my wrist. I ached and I complained.

I searched online. I sifted through ailments, half convinced it was the weather, how I slept, the repetitive keyboard and mouse movements associated with being online all day, every day. Nevertheless, I looked on with interest looking for something fun.

Nestled amongst the dislocation, sprains and breaks, I found them. The ganglion cyst, mallet finger and tennis elbow. Skier's thumb. Gonorrhea. Nursemaid elbow.

Rewind.

Gonorrhea? An STD? Causing elbow pain? I had to find more information. It seemed so strange, so absurd.

In approximately 2% of patients with untreated gonorrhea, the gonococcal infection may spread throughout the body and can cause fever, arthritis-like joint pain, and skin lesions.

"Huh," I thought and got back to work, rolling my wrists and popping the painkillers, holding a steaming mug of Cozy Chamomile against the tender flesh inside my wrist and stretching to reach the mouse.

By the end of the day, the painkillers had kicked in. The mist had lifted and the sun broke free. The aches had passed (without fever or lesions). I almost forgot about the pain, about the tennis elbows and skier's thumbs, the carpal tunnel and ganglion cysts, the gonorrhea. Almost.


Tag: Pain Ouch Office

Answering

Sitting on the couch, waiting - for the phone to ring, a knock on the door, inspiration to get up and put away my laundry from last week (or maybe that from the week before). Waiting.

As temperatures slunk into the low 70s, high 60s and the humidity in the air turned to pellets of mist and misery, I slid my way to the bookstore in rain-reluctant flip flops and an equally inappropriate skirt and top. I wanted to wear all of my favorite summer clothes before relegating them to the box under the bed.

Actual air temperature didn't matter as I shuffled my way to the store and pulled my frizzing hair into a ponytail. The clothes matched my new coco mint, le hot nerd goggles and my eye had obliging popped a blood vessel, paving the way for rocking the new accessory.

"What the...?" I wondered as I walked toward Olssons. The space seemed empty. "But I looked online. I called."

I realized that the stacks were pushed to the front of the store, the back half was empty. I scanned brightly printed fliers, looking for an explanation. Any explanation. Construction. New neighbors. I learned little.

I didn't need anything, though. No more books for myself and I'd called to check on the books for my friend. They had one of the two. I didn't quite know how I was going to get the other – walk back and succumb to the draw of megachain B&N? Stop by the Trover Shop? Call another Olssons? My phone waned, the battery drifting from one little bar to none.

"Do you have... Vegan Cupcakes?" I asked.

"You called, right?"

"Yep," I smiled and shrugged. "No Amy Sedaris, right?"

"Let me check again." He pulled me over to the appropriate section and stared forlornly at the shelf. "All of other stores have it. I could get it by tomorrow morning."

I thought about it, but it wasn't for me and I'd promised.

"Do they have it at Penn Quarter?"

While he called, I gazed at book after glorious book, chatting with his coworkers.

"No more books. No more books. No more books," I chanted softly, reaching toward Eat, Pray, Love. "No more books."

Duly chastised, I pulled in my hands and smiled when the man got off the phone. "I'll just take this."

A metro ride. Another bookstore for a book I didn't need, a book I promised to pick up for a friend. I asked for a bag this time, concerned about rain and certain that I would leave the books on her stoop, between the metal gate and wooden door. I picked up a bus and took the "stop requested" at her corner as a sign that I should just drop off the books. I called to be sure and my phone faded.

"Phone dying... Leaving books... Bye."

At home, I pulled the cordless from the receiver and threw it on the ottoman. It wouldn't ring on the base. It never rang on the base. I didn't bother to figure out why and I didn't bother to replace it. Generally, I avoided answering like the plague, a strangely communicable communication plague that frightened and confused me, the silence soothed my nerves.

But I expected a call from my friend with the books, one from my brother about a garment bag, one from a friend from high school, from home, from a man who used to be a boy I used to know. We hadn't talked in years.

We chatted for an hour.

My brother called and then stopped by for the garment bag, for papers from work, for mail, for a hunk of zucchini bread for the man who ran the pizza place on Barracks Row.

My friend sent a text message and called to thank me for the books.

"How much do I rock? I went to two stores."

"I would have just said they didn't have it."

"I wouldn't."

I'm glad I answered. The clothes would stay in the basket for another day, but I'd put away the shoes, the purses, the dishes from the machine. I would clean a little, catch up a lot and enjoy a cool summer night from the couch.

Tag: Friends Phones

Better with butter

Steam rose from the holes I'd poked with a fork between scrubbing and throwing in the microwave. I reached in and picked it up with my bare hands.

"Hot, hot, hot," I muttered through clenched teeth, tossing it from hand to hand. I palmed the potato in my left and opened the door to toaster oven with my right. "Hot."

I blew on my palms and walked back to the living room, snuggling up under my favorite fleece blanket with the laptop burning the tops of my thighs. I pushed my hair back once, twice, a dozen times without getting up for a band and read through my email, responding to friends from home. My third grade boyfriend. My fourth grade playmate.

I sniffled, convinced that the rain had done me in, forgetting for a moment the fact that I was allergic to my apartment. The mold growing in the back. Cold ashes drifting through the living room, stirred by wind in the flue. The fan made it worse, but I'd shut it off. I was already freezing.

A cold day in August.

Lights on in the middle of the afternoon, heater struggling against the unnecessary chill of air conditioning, I propped my head in hand and poked at the keyboard.

"Do you want to walk home from work?" a friend emailed.

"I'm up for a walk home unless it's raining and then I'd be up for a walk home but I'd have to change my shoes because I'm wearing the leather-soled flip flops that do NOT do well with rain or sweat. (Gross, I know.) I get all slip slidey," I replied.

At a half past five, I locked the computer, shut down the heater and turned off the lights. I walked to meet her and head into the District. My leather soles slapped the pavement as I hitched my right shoulder up to bear the weight of my notebooks and heels, my wallet, phone, camera, books and everything else that I lugged in my bag and never really used.

The sweater slipped from my left shoulder for the millionth time and I pushed it back, straightening for a second before hitching the bag and letting the sweater slip again.

Our walk home left us shopping in Georgetown, huddling under an umbrella and waiting for a bus.

Before we gave up, before I got all slip slidey, we ducked into favorite shops. Anthropologie. Urban Outfitter. I picked up a sheer blue dress with flowers.

"I don't need another summer dress," I told myself, my friend, nobody in particular, before shoving it back between other gauzy gowns. Picking it up again. Walking around the store with it. Hanging it on the bar once more.

The weather deterred me, pushed me from the sale racks to the tables piled high with sweaters, full price, full selection with at least one in every size and one in every color sweaters. Back to school shopping. Back to life shopping.

Autumn days. Football games. The county fair. Dances and movies and waiting, hoping, longing. The chill evoked memories of leaves crunching underfoot. Of smoke in the air. Of warm days and cold nights. Never quite dressed for either or both.

Actually, I did buy one thing before heading home. A potato. (At the market, not Anthropologie.) I'd saladed all of mine the day before but found myself in the mood for hot, buttery starch on a cool August night.

I might have writted more about it but I had palms to burn and a potato to butter. Friends to write. A book to read under the warm, red fleece of my favorite blanket.


Tag: Comfort Rain

Rocket Science

I went back to high school Sunday afternoon, to those painfully awkward years of hope and longing, aspirations and failures. Of wanting to be something more than I was. Of pegged jeans and ponytails. Of impossible crushes. Of banging teeth and smashing noses under the porch light on a first kiss and wondering if there would ever, ever be a second one.

Strangely enough, I loved every second of it. Sunday, at least. (Not so much the first time around.)

In Rocket Science, a wry comedy of adolescent angst, a teenager tackles the mysteries of life, love and public speaking. The movie not only reminded me, reminded us, of our awkward years; it made us laugh.

"He's just so creepy," exclaimed a woman from the front row, remarking on nerdy little Hal Hefner's disturbingly intense older brother. The audience laughed even harder because she was right. He was creepy... and what's with the toothbrush?!

High schooler Hal had a rough time with school, worse than most because of his stutter, not to mention his agenda-driven brother and a floundering home life. Somehow, someway, the poor boy who ordered fish rather than pizza in the school cafeteria because it was easier to say, made his way to the debate team.

Making his feature narrative debut [with Rocket Science], Academy Award®-nominated director Jeffrey Blitz leaves behind the conventions and clichés of coming-of-age tales to instead conjure a world where everyone, regardless of age, is befuddled by desire and the longing for human connection. Mixing humor with a compassionate regard for his characters and their idiosyncrasies, Blitz creates a film about the little insights that can emerge from, and ultimately eclipse, the agonies and disappointments of youth. - © Picturehouse


Tag: Movies Rocket Science

Three at a time

"Do you generally order your drinks three at a time?" I asked, noting the martini, mojito and glass of red on the bar.

"Hi, my name's Al. I'm an alcoholic," he quipped but didn't explain. I returned to my book, to a glass of white, of chenin blanc viognier. My friends were late. "Actually, this one's for the Lord and this one for Buddha."

He sipped from the glass of red. Cucumbers floated in the martini glass, the one for the Lord.

"I'd think you might have just ordered water or wine."

"J.C.'s not too into the party tricks. I can see you don't go to church much."

He looked over the bar, over the trinity of drinks, as he talked. I glanced at him and wondered if he'd formed the impression based on the once over he'd given me earlier or the double take while ordering the drinks. He had made eye contact, said "hi" and hesitated briefly before choosing the seat on my right. He left the drinks with his phone, keys and sunglasses on the bar between us.

I scanned the shelves, seeking a dark bottle with white label and red letters.

"Black label," he offered. "I think you should get that next."

"I don't think I've ever had black label," I replied. "What's the drink with the cucumbers?"

"Cool as a cucumber. It's a martini."

"Ah, that makes sense. I couldn't find Pimm's."

We both stared straight ahead, at the bottles, at the bustle behind the bar. In front of him, the martini glass sweated, losing its cool as mint wafted in a glass of melting ice, sugar and rum. A woman from the end of the bar left with her friends, calling "goodbye" to the man beside me, to Al, the alcoholic.

Under his breath, he explained, "Every time I come here, I run into women with whom I've been on only one or two dates over the past five years."

I laughed.

"With how many women have you been on only one or two dates in the past five years?"

"I come here a lot."

Our conversation started and stopped. Every time I returned to my book, it started again. I slipped a bookmark between the pages and turned slightly in my chair. Religion and politics, travel and art. My friends were very late.

"I prefer Picasso's blue period," he noted and I laughed again.

"I do, too, but I never say it. It sounds so pretentious... Have you been to the Picasso museum in Paris?"

We drifted through Paris, an interview between Charlie Rose and former President of France Valery Giscard D'Estaing, the light in Provence. We meandered from Dalí into the Metamorphosis of Narcissus and war. Much like the art we discussed, the conversation seemed surreal. Not exactly what it seemed to be, it was slow and rambling, without beginning or end, without direction.

He sipped from his glass of red and I from my glass of white. The ice continued to melt.

"If all of life could be this: music, conversation, a glass of pinot noir."

He checked his phone and I saw a friend walk past, looking for me. I stood and raised an arm. Al, the alcoholic, glanced behind me and waved at someone else.

"I'm late," apologized my friend.

"That's OK," I replied. "The birthday girl isn't even here yet."

As I turned to hug my friend, I caught sight of the woman in question, the birthday girl, and another friend. The man beside me stood, smiled, and handed Buddha's drink to one friend, the Lord's to another.

"Kristin, have you met Alex? Alex, this Kristin."

"We've met."


Tag: Drinks Conversation

August night

"Oh, dear" followed the clatter of glass on the thin, aluminum tabletop. "I knew I was going to do that."

Glancing to the left, I saw red wine slowly spreading as a woman frantically blotted her white T-shirt. I reached across the gap, napkin in hand, and staunched the flow. My friend did the same, soaking red, red wine into our dirty white napkins.

The woman continued babbling and blotting, blotting and babbling. Her date stared at some distant point, unaffected by the commotion around him, as servers and patrons offered towels, napkins and advice.

"Salt. Trust me."

"Really?" she asked, looking at the stain blossoming across her chest and clambering onto her shoulder.

"You just need a glass for the other side," offered my friend.

The server offered soda water, which the couple politely declined.

"We'll just take the check... I think we should go home from here; we do live close."

"In this neighborhood, nobody would notice..."

We'd already seen one very drunk man, boy, stumbling down the sidewalk, cell phone in hand.

"He's trying to arrange a booty call at, what, 9 o'clock?"

I folded my hands in my empty lap and looked at the sparse board between us. Bits of corn relish and cannellini bean salad dotted the wood between crumbs of grilled bread. White wine chili. Caprese salad. I groaned with something between pleasure and pain. I had eaten too much.

My friend and I batted around another night, a year and half earlier. A local bar. A girl in obscenely, obviously preppy popped-collared shirt with a wine stain covering the giant horse and rider.

"Oh, you totally got it," offered my friend. "Nobody will notice at all."

People noticed, but nobody cared.

The couple paid their check and left, running awkwardly across the quiet street toward the Library of Congress. The Capitol glowed white and surreal. Nobody noticed that. In the distance, an alarm sounded, strange and plaintive.

"It must be a car."

Suddenly, it grew. Obnoxious. Blaring. Scattering thoughts and words. I looked up to see a man close a door behind him and the sound dropped. He glanced around and punched numbers into a phone.

We resumed our conversation, picking up the strands from where they'd fallen, neglected on the tabletop. I watched a diner walk over to pass the man a cigarette and a shrug as he shifted from foot to foot, listening to the alarm and a tone sounding unanswered on his mobile.

"He's probably staying with his sister, his girlfriend, a friend from college and he doesn't know the code," I observed. Absently, I blew a sticky hair and a mosquito off my forehead. Neither left for long. I swatted at the mosquito. I pulled the hair into a sloppy, faltering bun that pulled from the top to the back of my head and I shrugged. I would let it be.

Tag: Dinner Wine

Good advice

"We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones."

The quote of the day stuck with me as they so often do these days, burrowing into my mind only to reemerge sometime later, at the most inopportune time, to make me question my own existence.

Of course, it was the Francois de La Rochefoucauld quote that made me think. The one from Joe Theismann just made me laugh, "Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein." Good old Norman.

I wondered if de La Rochefoucauld was right, what did I confess and why? Was I fooling anyone?

I wondered about the man. Isn't there some advice about taking advice from strangers, about not believing every thing we read? I didn't know a thing about him other than the fact that his quote stuck in my head. I found some 228 more.

"If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others."

and

"He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks."

and

"No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong."

He was rather prolific with the quotes, this "greatest maxim writer of France." He seemed to have a lot to say; though, he only published two works. But what about the man?

"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example."

Life and death. Dates and influences. I found praise of the author but little about the man other than the words he left behind.

"To establish oneself in the world, one has to do all one can to appear established."

I found information about his (seemingly virtuous) wife, the mother of his eight children, and reports of his own "entanglements" and "indiscretions." A bit about his own seemingly bad luck. One site referred to his misfortune as "it is sufficient to say that he was always brave and generally unlucky. His run of bad fortune reached its climax in the battle of the Faubourg Saint Antoine (1652), where he was shot through the head, and it was thought that he would lose the sight of both eyes."

Shot in the head and he survived. He thrived. He fathered eight children. He took part in a salon and helped found a successor of sorts, spending his solitude writing memoirs and earning more than a bit of flak for his dismal portrayal of friends. Apparently, he did not take heed of his own observation.

"A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire."

I found another reference to the man and his writing: "With a few exceptions La Rochefoucauld's maxims represent the matured result of the reflection of a man deeply versed in the business and pleasures of the world, and possessed of an extraordinarily fine and acute intellect, on the conduct and motives which have guided himself and his fellows."

Hard to read, even harder to live, an unfortunately clear lens through which to see oneself, but a valuable one nevertheless. I would have to remember his name, his letters, his Maxims the next time I hit Capitol Hill Books. In the meantime, I'd have to focus on the quotes I read and maybe learn a little from a very unlucky man.

"It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self."


Tag: Advice Maxims

Elvis

I carry an Elvis clutch. I got it in London ages ago. Actually, the one I carry isn't the one I got in London. I wore out the zipper. My mom tried to fix it. My grandma tried to fix it. All to no avail. (Note: I was well into my late 20s when they attempted to save me from the broken zipper. I just turned to them because Mom and Grandma fix things better than I.)

The one I carry now is one I found on eBay. It came from London as well and the lovely woman from whom I bought it told me she would find me another if I weren't the winning bidder. I told her the story of my clutch: the broken zipper, my frantic attempts to fix it, how it was impossible to find in the States. Strangely enough, she appreciated my love for the little pleather clutch with young, Blue Hawaii Elvis surrounded by beauties. When I received the package, the seller included a note telling me that she was glad I won.

I don't know why I love it so. I could have one made with my own photography on it; I take enough pictures. But Blue Hawaii...

Angela Lansbury was not old enough (at 35) to mother 25-year-old Elvis as Chad Gates. I don't know how they roll on pineapple plantations but I doubt she conceived at 9. (Of course, in 1961, any actress in her 30s would only be considered for matronly roles.) It was a little absurd but the movie was just plain fun.

"Mr. Gates, are you sure you can handle a teacher and 4 teenage girls?"

"I'll sure try."

Try he did, singing his way out of scrapes and misunderstandings and into the hearts of every girl.

With a tag line like, "Ecstatic romance...exotic dances...exciting music in the world's lushest paradise of song!" how could one go wrong? And Angela Lansbury ordering, "Fetch me a Mai Tai, Ping Pong."

Did I mention the houseboy named Ping Pong? (So wrong.)

I should be too young for Elvis, not yet two when he died (30 years ago today). As a child, though, I watched summer movie-a-thons on TBS with all Frankie and Annette one week and Elvis the next. I'm not just talking the famous ones, the "good" ones like Jailhouse Rock or Viva Las Vegas, but Roustabout, Charro!, Change of Habit (complete with Mary Tyler Moore as a nun). I've seen Girls! Girls! Girls! and Harum Scarum. It Happened at the World's Fair and Clambake. I've seen them all.

Every. Single. One.

Some of them, like Blue Hawaii, I've probably seen a half dozen times. Some would be offensive by today's standards but it seemed a different world, a different place, a different time.

I don't know all that much about the man he was. I don't really listen to his music. Though, I'm a sucker for Love Me Tender and I definitely appreciate his contribution to rock and roll.

I've never been to Graceland. I am not sure how I feel about flying Elvises or Elvi or whatever the plural of Elvis might be and I am really not sure about the rites of matrimony being performed by an impersonator in a polyester suit, but there was something about him. I get it. Just a little.


Tag: Elvis Movies

Screen on the Green

"I guess you're staying for the movie," said a Park Service man, passing my bench. A blanket and a baguette peeked from the top of my bag. "Hot date?"

"I'm meeting friends," I replied. "Girlfriends."

"You've got your girlfriends and I'll bring my guy friends."

"I've got bread and cheese."

"I've got wine in the car."

I grinned and nodded. I didn't think I would see him again. I didn't, but I enjoyed a little mid-afternoon flirting, sitting on a bench in the shade, enjoying a breeze, a book, a smile. I was ridiculously early, but I couldn't or wouldn't work any more. I thought of a museum but my feet ached. I slipped off my shoes and curled up on the bench, waiting. Technically the first one there, I waited to spread my blanket in the sun. Music wafted from the speakers. Israel Kamakawiwo`ole.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
And the dreams that you dreamed of
Once in a lullaby

The song made me think of New Orleans. The song always made me think of New Orleans. I drifted into happy thoughts of visiting friends, of walking through the Quarter, taking pictures. Of music and beignets. Of breezes and thunderstorms and sweaty tendrils curling against my neck. Soon. So very, very soon.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.

At the first sign of a moviegoer, of a woman in a skort and polo shirt spreading comforters in the middle of the Mall, I rose and picked my barefoot way through the pebbles and grass to spread my lonely blanket.

"I should have brought more," I thought as another woman spread tarps behind and beside the first. I stretched and tried to make myself big, bigger, as large as possible to save as much space as possible. I sprawled with my book in the late afternoon light.

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.

Tarps lifted and shifted in the breeze. I handed over a couple of notebooks, a box of crackers, a small platter to help pin down a corner of another girl's tarp. She handed me a plastic cup filled with something that might have been sangria if we weren't on the Mall, where alcohol's illegal. Another girl lent me blankets to spread, to expand my space.

My friends drifted into the space, one at a time, and we spread a picnic in the middle of mismatched blankets. Cheese melting in the late-day heat. Bread and crackers. Watermelon and cherries. Guacamole dip. Cheese dips. Watercress. Homemade cookies. Something that might have been wine if we weren't on the Mall. Food and books. Shoes thrown to the side. We talked about books, about Special Topics in Calamity Physics, complete with readers' guide and discussion questions.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can't I?

The sun dipped low. People drifted in and out. Friends drifted in and out. Our space compressed. Tweety and Sylvester lit the screen. Movie goers jumped and twisted for the HBO dance and suddenly, we were in Morocco, in unoccupied French Africa during World War II. Casablanca.

I'd only just started Suite Francaise. German forces prepared to invade Paris in the book as they marched across the screen. Heartbroken, Bogey jumped a train from Paris to Marseille. In just a few weeks, I follow a similar route. Paris. Provence.

Tired and sticky, I lounged on my blanked with a friend's feet at my back. Ingrid Bergman's beautiful face was obscured as I spent most of the movie watching the back of a man's head. Love and war. I cheered and jeered, laughed and hooted. Political espionage. Classic lines. Classic beauty. Mosquitos and sweaty cheese.

It was absolutely perfect.

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?


Tag: Screen on the Green Washington DC Casablanca Movies

Nerve wracking

nerve-rack•ing [nurv-rak-ing]
–adjective
extremely irritating, annoying, or trying: a nerve-racking day; a nerve-racking noise.
Also, nerve-wracking.

19 months ago, my nurse practitioner found a lump in my breast. She recommended a mammogram and an ultrasound, a sonogram. She also recommended cutting chocolate and caffeine, which darn near killed me. Stress without chocolate? Life without Diet Coke? Life with stress? I worried a little and pushed it out of my mind a lot.

18 months ago, I got a mammogram. The radiologist came in and talked to me, tapped my breast, ran another ultrasound. He couldn't "see" the lump but said he felt something. He told me to see a surgeon. The nurse practitioner told me the same.

17 months ago, I saw a surgeon who couldn't find the lump, either, and told me that everything was fine (based on her topical exam). I had large and dense but otherwise normal breasts.

For the most part, I stopped thinking about it all, with a momentary twinge and the occasional thought on my breasts such as "does this bra give me four boobs?" or "will I look like a hooker in that dress?"

3 months ago, I drove to work for my (mostly) annual appointment and blew out my tire, requiring a tow and a replacement. Later that day, my gynecologist found a lump, the same lump in the same place of the same breast. The one that wasn't really there, only it was there. A little bigger, a little harder. She thought it might be a fluid-filled cyst and scheduled me for an aspiration.

2½ months ago, I rescheduled my appointment. I planned to leave town on the day it was scheduled. (My car broke down, changing my travel plans slightly, but I was still leaving town.) I called to reschedule. The office manager informed me that my gynecologist didn't perform aspirations. I needed to see a surgeon.

"Dr. X told me to come in for a needle aspiration."

"Dr. X doesn't do needle aspirations."

"Dr. X told me to schedule one."

"Dr. X doesn't do needle aspirations."

"Whatever you call it, I don't care. Dr. X told me that she's going to take a needle, stick it in the lump in my breast and try to drain it."

"Please hold."

...

"You'll have to come in on a Thursday."

"Fine."

"No, I'm telling you that you have to come in on a Thursday."

"Fine."

"We have an opening in September."

"I'm not OK with that."

"Please hold."

...

"I guess I'm just going to have to double book."

"Fine."

2 months ago, my gynecologist gave me a shot of lidocaine, stuck a needle in my breast and tried to withdraw fluid. Unfortunately, it didn't "deflate" (a word that inspired visions of balloons in my melons). Apparently, the lump was not a fluid-filled cyst.

"It's... harder than I remember," she said. "And bigger. You should schedule an appointment with a surgeon."

2 months ago, the day after the failed aspiration, I called surgeons. I also found a second lump. The first (surgeon, not lump) didn't take my insurance. The second said I needed new imaging before I could see a surgeon. So, I made an appointment for another mammogram and ultrasound. They tried to schedule it for September but managed to find an earlier time when I burst into tears. I called my doctor to request an order for imaging that she didn't, well, order and drove to her office for the order and another hospital for my earlier screens.

1 month ago, I stood half-naked and shivering before a large machine as a woman positioned and repositioned me, smashing my not-insignificant breasts flat between plastic plates, removing any shred of decency to which I clung. Four screens. Six. Seven. The technician moved me to another room for an ultrasound, a sonogram, with a radiologist who told me she couldn't find the lump with the machinery and recommended that I see a surgeon. Apparently, she concurred with my doctor and the reason I was there in the first place.

The girl at the end of the hall, the girl who handled scheduling, told me that it didn't matter whom I saw or when because my imaging was clean. She reluctantly made an appointment and flippantly told me that I could have it removed. The lump that couldn't be seen. The lump that was obviously nothing. I walked out of the office practically shaking with frustration and rage. It wasn't the lump that bothered me. It was not knowing if it were benign or something intent on doing me harm.

1 week ago, I met with a surgeon. She shook my hand and palpated my breasts. She had trouble finding the lump and thought maybe it was normal (yet lumpy) tissue I/we had felt. I found the lump, eventually, panic stricken that she would just tell me to go away. That it would be fine. That in another year and a half I would go through everything again.

It's hard to find a lump in one's own breast (at least it's hard for me to find one in mine, even one of two) in front of someone else. It's nerve wracking to think, "I know it's here" and "why can't I find it" and "what if I cannot find it and she just sends me home?"

I found the lump (or one of the lumps), which was distinctly lump-like and not normal, lumpy tissue. The surgeon stuck a rather large needle in my boobstack: no lidocaine, no real warning and wiggled it about, trying to hit the thing and pull out cells. Fine needle aspiration. Biopsy. Pain. I never did know if she hit the magical, mystery lump, the disappearing/reappearing bane of my existence. She sent me home.

2 hours and 26 minutes ago, I got the results of my biopsy: Benign. I need to return in 6 months to find out if it's grown or changed, to find out if I need to start over, to do it all again.

I should feel happy. I should feel better. I should feel something, anything, but I am numb. I almost want to cry. Almost.

Month upon month of waiting. Waiting and wondering. Waiting and worrying. Waiting. I definitely want to cry.


Tag: Breast Health Worry Stress

A day with the kids

"I'm hot," whined my nephew.

"My feet hurt," from a niece followed closely by her sister with, "We didn't even see the octopus."

They wanted to see everything, do everything, at the National Zoo, but they had trouble weighing their demands with the physical constraints of their tired little bodies.

"Will you carry me?"

"No... Does that sound like fun for me?"

"Yes."

We had practically the same exchange over a stroller.

"Can you rent one of those?"

"No. Who would push it?"

"You or Mommy."

I raised an eyebrow and kept walking with a sweaty little hand tucked in mine. Down and back up the hill. The zebras and emu, the cheetah and sloth. The elephants. The lion and tigers and bear, oh my.

The bird house with the pretty little ibis. Storks sans babies. Oryx. Crake. (I thought briefly on Margaret Atwood.) My nephew found that he weighed the same as a Thomson's Gazelle, a single serving for a lion, more than one for a cheetah who might lose the rest to a hyena. A kookaburra laughing hysterically.

I had visited the Zoo just once before. I saw it again through the eyes of a child, visiting the Kids' Farm, giving names to the animals – Stanley and Sara, the cranes. Seeing an elephant step up to the scale and weighing in at close to 4,400 pounds. Watching sea lions swim and play on the hot summer's day. Otters traipsing up and downhill in a line.

"They're playing follow the otter," the 5-year-old noted as she watched them disappear into a pool at the top of the hill.

"I'd like to be in a pool like that," observed her sister at the sea lion tank. We stood and watched.

For hours, we meandered through the Zoo and under the misters, enjoying the animals, taking pictures and talking. They might remember it for the rest of their lives. I hope to remember it for mine.


Tag: Zoo Family Kids

In the gloaming

Standing beside the stairs, one ear turned to the conversation at hand, the other turned to nature. An howl hooted, followed soon by the knocking of a woodpecker. Laughter and quibbling carried on the wind, and I sighed. Content.

I joined the conversation beside me of futures and love, of expectations and happiness. The man sitting on the stairs, the girl standing and leaning against the rail and I chatting into the gloaming. We'd already finished a potluck dinner of burgers and brats, of salad and fruit and margaritas that left my head spinning.

On the lawn, a college friend tilted her head back and laughed. Her red curls bounced with joy. At the end of the field, by a doubled pair of wickets, a woman with graying hair argued good naturedly with her boyfriend. She beat him resoundingly due to a series of unfortunate events in his own game.

The man on the stairs had won the first game, before dinner. He not only won; he took out each and every last one of the other players, knocking their balls from the game with a solid thud.

At the edge of the field, a trio of women sat, talking and laughing. Smoke curled from one woman's hand. From where we were, we couldn't hear their conversation but their laughter tinkled in the evening breeze.

Dessert would follow. Rhubarb squares from my mother's recipe and strawberry-peach cobbler cobbled from scratch. Despite the fact that I disliked both strawberry and peach and technically cobbler, I peeled and pitted. I hulled the berries. It seemed like a fitting dessert for a both a summer's eve and a discussion of American Gods.

We skipped the discussion, though, for the first time in the nine-year history of the club. Some had not finished the book and honestly wanted to enjoy the ending. We talked instead of tangential relations to the book. Paris Hilton and jail. Politics. War. Jesus Camp.

Conversations dipped and twirled, drifting and jumping through the room, through the group. Married couples. Coworkers. Friends from college. Friends from last fall. A mother and son. One of the men told the story of the first time he'd met the boy, 6 years old and standing on the front porch with a garden hose in his pants. I'd heard the story a half dozen times and every retelling made me laugh.

"This is perfect," I said to my friends outside on the steps. The weather. The laughter. The arguing and the woodpecker. I didn't know that it would be the highlight of my weekend, a weekend filled with swimming and shopping, baking and book club. A concert or two. Long walks in the city. But that moment – that one moment in the gloaming – contained a world of its own.


Tag: Summer